Secrets of the Office Masters: Tasteful Stationery

Most of Outlook's canned stationery choices are unbearably corny and probably won't impress your regular message recipients, especially if they're business contacts. Worse, any Office user will instantly recognize these canned backgrounds. If you must use stationery for HTML messages, consider customizing an existing pattern or creating a new one from scratch.

The procedures are slightly different, depending on your choice of email editors. Outlook's editor allows you to choose stationery, which despite the fancy name, is simply an HTML document. Word can also use stationery, or you can choose themes, which are compiled collections of backgrounds, bullet formats, and font information.